Microproduct data guidebeginner

OFAC Specially Designated Nationals List

Treasury blocked-party names for building bounded sanctions-screening alerts that stay inside OFAC matching limits.

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At a glance

Difficulty
Beginner — comfortable for a first prototype
Size
Tiny · ≤0.02 GB
Formats
CSV, XML
Access
Download
API key
Not required
Provider
Office of Foreign Assets Control
Updates
Continuous
Data terms
U.S. Government public data / federal copyright guidance

From source to product signal

Test a product idea in four steps

OFAC publishes the SDN list as CSV and XML. Start with the primary names file and a handful of exact-string checks. A name match is not a confirmed hit, aliases live in a separate file, and this extract is not a screening product or legal advice.

1

Check the setup

  • Python 3.10 or newer
  • A notebook environment such as Jupyter or Google Colab
  • An internet connection
2

Access the data

  1. 1.Open the Sanctions List Service page and identify the SDN CSV download.
  2. 2.Load the primary names file with the documented column order.
  3. 3.Compare only exact strings from an authorized customer list and keep the retrieval timestamp.
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3

Run the Python example

Install the packages, then run the notebook cell.

python -m pip install pandas

import pandas as pd

columns = [
    "ent_num",
    "sdn_name",
    "sdn_type",
    "program",
    "title",
    "call_sign",
    "vess_type",
    "tonnage",
    "grt",
    "vess_flag",
    "vess_owner",
    "remarks",
]
sdn = pd.read_csv(
    "https://www.treasury.gov/ofac/downloads/sdn.csv",
    names=columns,
    dtype=str,
)
sdn["retrieved_at_utc"] = pd.Timestamp.now(tz="UTC")
print(sdn[["ent_num", "sdn_name", "sdn_type", "program"]].head(20))
4

Test a useful signal

Build an exact-name SDN lookup

Test whether a small authorized name list can be checked against primary SDN names.

  1. 01Load primary SDN names and drop placeholder null tokens such as -0-.
  2. 02Compare a short authorized name list with exact uppercase matching only.
  3. 03Explain that aliases, weak aliases, and fuzzy scores require the linked files and are not a legal determination.

Dataset details

Office of Foreign Assets Control is a government source. Last verified 2026-08-17. Temporal coverage: continuously updated designations.

Theme

Government & Policy

Domains

RegulationFinanceCompliance

Data types

Registry DataTabular

Tasks

AlertingSearchCompliance Monitoring

Geography

Global

Formats

CSVXML

Provider

Office of Foreign Assets Control

Data terms

U.S. Government public data / federal copyright guidance